Posts Tagged ‘book’

Really? We’re still banning books? Or are we BACK to banning books? Because “To Kill A Mockingbird” is a great book. While it is possible that the same issues/values can be learned from another book, this is a damn good one. Language makes you uncomfortable? Banning books makes ME uncomfortable.

EDIT: the book wasn’t BANNED per se. It was “removed” from the reading list. Still annoyed.

UPDATE: I read some of the responses to the story on Twitter. My replies are below.

I actually never liked To Kill a Mockingbird. Thought Atticus was paternalistic & just at the bare minimum of seeing black people as human.

Fine. As long as you aren’t saying that therefore the book shouldn’t be read. I don’t think that’s what the person is saying but if so, she misses the point. Let’s say you think this about Atticus. (I don’t but whatever.) USE THAT AS A JUMPING OFF POINT FOR DISCUSSION. If I recall correctly, Atticus’ stance was startling because of where he was in that particular era. But seriously, PLEASE disagree. Let’s talk about it.

To Kill a Mockingbird makes me VERY UNCOMFORTABLE TOO, it literally says ALL white people are racists. Not true!

“Gus and Me: The Story of My Granddad and My First Guitar is a “rare and intimate look” into his early years.”

I’d read it. Here’s a bit more from the BBC:

Richards was introduced to music by his grandfather, jazz musician Theodore Augustus Dupree.It will be published as a hardback and ebook later this year.“I have just become a grandfather for the fifth time, so I know what I’m talking about,” said Richards.“The bond, the special bond, between kids and grandparents is unique and should be treasured. This is a story of one of those magical moments. May I be as great a grandfather as Gus was to me.”

That’s nice. Isn’t that nice? Good ol’ Keith.

Here’s a video of Keith onstage in Abu Dubai in February of 2014. He’s still got it, fans still love him… grandpa Richards was wise to introduce lil’ Keith to the geetar.

I need to read deeper into “Tiger Mom” Amy Chua‘s new book “The Triple Package” because I don’t want to rant about something based solely on a blog post.

If she’s the Tiger Mom, does that mean she has the Eye of the Tiger?

However, my time is limited, and the shelf-life for news gets shorter every day. Seriously, there’s stuff in my blog queue from… I’m not even going to look. Therefore, I’ll write what I can now and get back to it with more info if/when I can.

“Groups of people superior to all others”? Seriously? This is something that we’re allowed to say now? Because I thought that was, you know, like saying men can’t be primary caregivers (cough, SAHD WAHD, cough cough), or something far more obviously offensive. (I tried to come up with an example that felt not completely racist/sexist/jerky but I couldn’t.)

Gawker’s Sargent goes on:

According to Chua and Rubenfeld, there are three reasons — the so-called “triple package,” please bear with me — why those eight groups reign over everyone else in the world: superiority complexes, insecurity, and impulse control. They believe (“believe”) that true success is reached because you think you’re better than everyone else, but also not really, and that you can resist temptation as you strive for a larger goal. Oh, and also that you haven’t “yet bought into mainstream, post-1960s, liberal American principles.”

Sargent is critical of Chua’s ideas, as is the NY Post’s book reviewer Maureen Callahan. Sargent then calls Chua’s… output… “pop psych trolling”. I don’t know what that means. I do know that declaring a race/ethnic group/nationality/person who holds certain religious beliefs to be superior based solely on that criteria is the slipperiest of slopes. “Asians are smarter.” There we go. That one is positive. “Jews are good with money.” Also positive. But do either of those statements sound OK to you? Because they don’t sound OK to me. More importantly, would you want your children to say “Nigerians are more successful because they are Nigerian”? I wouldn’t. If that is indeed the premise of “The Triple Package”, that’s bad for a variety of reasons.

NOTE: As of this moment I haven’t read the Post’s review of Chua’s book, nor have I read the book. (To be fair, the book doesn’t “drop” until February 4, 2014. That’s what the kids say, right? Drop?) This is due to the fact that I have kids to feed and stuff. Like I said, I may do an updated post later.

It may be taboo to say, but some groups in America do better than others. Mormons have recently risen to astonishing business success. Cubans in Miami climbed from poverty to prosperity in a generation. Nigerians earn doctorates at stunningly high rates. Indian and Chinese Americans have much higher incomes than other Americans; Jews may have the highest of all.

I don’t think I need a book like Organizing For Dummies. First, I’m not a dummy. Second, the issue isn’t organization. It’s time.

Yes, there’s a book for that too. And it can bite me. (Technically it can’t, unless it’s one of those books from Harry Potter. But I digress.)

The issue for me is not managing time properly. The issue is not having any time to manage.

Parenting, as I’ve said often, is not easy. Raising kids takes time. Some of the things that one must do when raising kids are things that can only be done if said kids leave you alone for awhile. My kids are great. But I’m the type of person who needs multiple minutes in a row in order to accomplish anything significant. Starting a task — even, say, writing a blog post — and then getting interrupted (not always by kids) can and does derail my activity. This isn’t the case for everyone, but it is for me.

Then there’s relaxation. Downtime is a requirement for parents. It took me awhile to realize this, but trust me, it’s true. While it is true that the children eventually go to sleep and I could use that time to do various tasks, that’s not always a good idea. Because a tired dad is a cranky dad, and a cranky dad is no fun for anyone.

Eventually the stuff that absolutely must be done will in fact be done. Because that’s the way it is. This is how we do it. Letting important things slide is not an option. Starting and stopping and getting stymied is still annoying.

They are ALL good movies, however Avengers did what superhero movies needed to do. That is all. I win.

That is indeed all. Well, not really. The above was followed someone stating that “the avengers might be one of the most overrated movies of all time, despite the fact I like it, people just give it way too much undeserved adulation“, which itself led to, “Nolan’s batman films are the most overrated comic book movies of all time. Begins actually felt like a comic book. things slowly started to trickle down hill with the dark knight until we received the all over the place plot of The dark knight rises.” (Note: all comments pasted as is, spelling/capitalization/grammar missteps included.) Eventually the thread gets back to what’s really important, which is that there are a lot more superhero movies on the horizon and how awesome that is.

Personally I’m more excited about the upcoming Marvel movies than I am those from the Distinguished Competition. Part of this is because I’m more of a Marvel fan to begin with. (Not that I dislike DC; I love the Justice League cartoon and yack about it so often that even my fellow Geek Gold Card members tune me out when I get going.) Other reasons include:

(a) There are more Marvel movies on the way, and the main goal here is to have as many superhero movies as possible. Preferably one per week.
(b) Out of the recently released superhero movies, those from Marvel (Thor, Captain America, Iron Man) have been better than those from DC (Green Lantern, The Dark Knight Rises, and even Man Of Steel, although I liked it fine).

So is it fair for me to call a book awesome if I haven’t read it? Can I tell you to buy Mike Adamick‘s book, Dad’s Book of Awesome Projects, simply because I think Mike himself is awesome?

Of course I can.

Mike Adamick is a dad and a writer. I guess he’s a SAHD WAHD like myself, although I don’t like to bestow that acronym upon anyone other than myself because of the way it sounds when you say it out loud. (Try it, I’ll wait.) Anyway, I know Mike from way back when we both wrote for Babble at the same time (he was there first).